Yes yes, and the East India Company will reign supreme for all time, Refco is too important to fail, Blockbuster will dominate home entertainment forever, and it’s simply inconceivable that a single trader could bring down Baring Brothers, they’ve been going for centuries!
Businesses fail. google will likely still exist, but alphabet, I don’t see a future for - just a gradual withering followed by a collapse and disintegration into myriad properties in a fire sale. They are brittle, overburdened by unity of disparity, culturally adrift, and they aren’t taking risks any more. Inertia will keep it all going for a while, but not forever.
Sure, I may be wrong, but I do put my money where my mouth is, and I am right more often than not.
Your reply is interesting because you strongly believe alphabet will fail but only supported that by arguing that over the very long term so companies fail.
I see a lot of hate for alphabet on HN. It seems very emotional. I think people feel personally betrayed by thier bad behaviours because they were 'supposed to be better'.
The thing is, there are a lot of companies you can hate. Exon, mcdonalds, blackrock, even Microsoft, there are people who are very mad at these companies.
That's not an argument that the company is doomed. If you are really putting your money where your mouth is (what shorting google?) Then I hope you have a better reasoning as to why they will fail not just eventually but this year.
I don’t hate alphabet - neither do I love them. I look at them through the lens of history. You on the other hand seem to be emotionally wounded by my assessment of them.
None of the companies you list are likely to collapse soon, as they remain focussed on their various missions, and have a unity of purpose. Out of all of them, I think Microsoft is the most likely to fail, as they are likely to be blindsided when the user-focussed desktop OS era ends. Their diversification efforts have been a mixed bag, and without windows, they are far, far less significant.
What I do look at is sentiment analysis - what other people feel and think about businesses, as that drives the market.
No, I don’t short, as just buying equities which are beginning significant growth is just as effective and doesn’t drive demise - I held goog for nearly 20 years, and sold off late ‘21, as I think they’ve peaked, and anything from here on is speculative froth.
You’ll note I keep saying “I think”, rather than making statements of fact - because this is purely what I think - I am not a Sybil.
You seem to have missed this:
>> They are brittle, overburdened by unity of disparity, culturally adrift, and they aren’t taking risks any more.
> Out of all of them, I think Microsoft is the most likely to fail, as they are likely to be blindsided when the user-focussed desktop OS
That might have been a reasonable assessment back in Balmer’s era. But what you saying has already happened years ago…
They have mostly reinvented themselves since then. Enterprise/office isn’t going anywhere. Xbox if fine too. And there is a lot of growth in their cloud/etc. business.
IMHO out of Google, Amazon & Facebook, Microsoft seems to be the least dysfunctional and and general best positioned one to be successful in the future.
Xbox doesn't seem fine. I think it's propped up by game pass having cross platform title access with windows but it's still under the Xbox balance sheet, but growth and number of exclusives doesn't paint a healthy picture.
Yeah by Xbox I mean the console + game pass + PC/Xbox gaming division. The console itself at this point is not much more than a cheap(ish) locked down gaming PC.
For context, I have never worked for or with google, and don't use their products much other than search. So I don't have much emotional connection to the company. My comments were more motivated by a kind of concern.
My perception is that Google split into a number of focussed business units when they became Alphabet, with the Google component being execution focussed and the more speculative stuff spun out into other group companies like deepmind, waymo, etc. That's why the Google unit stopped doing nice incubator projects that we were all excited about.
From what I've seen, this cash cow execution business unit has been fairly effective - in particular they've done a good job of entering the cloud market space producing a differentiated product that is penetrating their target customers. They have not been able to compete with Microsofts excelent and deeply embedded IT sales capability, so they've done well to go after people with big problems that other vendors more civillian offerings are not so great for. They are currently the first choice platform for AI training for instance.
I'd contrast this to Facebook who seem to be trying to become a deep tech VR hardware vendor in the same business unit as their cash cow entertainemet and advertising business which has confused investors and probably distracted their focus.
We can see that Google has innovated. For instance, a lot of Tela's stock price is based on the idea that they are going to run autonomous taxis, and instead of owning cars we will just hail a Tesla when we need one. Telsa does not run autonomous taxis, but you can ride a Google Waymo taxi today in Pheonix, and they are running autonmous trucks which is a big industry Tesla aren't even attempting yet. They are doing a lot in medicine and medical devices. This seems a lot more diversified and innovative than other companies - it's just not as visible to the HN community as an RSS reader or some other internet thing we care about.
We can also say that... on the AI thing, I think it's very early days. Microsoft have a shakey looking deal with the first mover, but Alphabet and Facebook have the advantage of actually using AI extensively in their real buisnesses and may be able to deliver product market fit better. Time will tell.
On the stocks front, I agree with your overall thesis - I think it's harder for these conglomerates to grow than a new company just because they are already giants in their niche and even adding a new niche generates less growth in percentage terms than for a smaller company starting from a lower number. I just wouldn't actually bet against google as much as I would some of the others.
you originally said 10 years. so hopelessly delusional lol. since you're so confident let's bet $10,000. By your claim let's bet by 2034 (I'll give you some extra time). Alphabet Corporation and all subsidiaries will no longer exist. If they do I get your $10K. If it does not you get my $10K.
We can both give the money to a mutually trusted third party now.
If you believe this it implies you have gone full malthusian, because the innovation engine that made Google possible could also disappear Google, but without that engine we are all screwed.
